There are 600 million reasons why Paramount Skydance should not tinker too much with the inner workings of CNN after the company completes the acquisition of its parent, Warner Bros. Discovery. Staffers at the news giant fear the company soon expected to be their new owner will ignore all of them.
CNN is not what it once was. It’s not grabbing the attention and viewers that it did under the aegis of its founder, entrepreneur Ted Turner, and it’s not throwing off the same amount of cash as when it was managed by media executive Jeff Zucker. There are more news platforms vying for the attention of the people who might have turned first to CNN when important headlines break, and many of those rivals use more provocative personalities and hotter rhetoric than CNN mainstays like Wolf Blitzer or Laura Coates. But give the newsroom this: Warner Bros. Discovery projected in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year that CNN will generate $600 million in profit in 2026 on $1.8 billion in revenue. The news company remains “on track” to do so, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Paramount will need that money. Its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery will give rise to a new entity that will have $79 billion in net debt. CNN, which WBD said is aiming to generate an additional $100 million in revenue each year through 2030 as it builds out a digital subscription offering, could help. Paramount has vowed to eliminate more than $6 billion in costs and continues to grapple with declines in advertising revenue and a passel of cable networks that are shedding subscribers.
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Inside CNN, however, there is a strong concern that Paramount’s executives “don’t know or don’t care” about managing the news giant for profit or for the future, according to one staffer. “I don’t have glimmers of hope and don’t see reasons for any,” this person says.
Both Paramount Skydance and CNN declined to make executives available for comment.
It’s not hard to understand why some at CNN have fallen victim to ennui. CBS News, part of Paramount Skydance, has been the subject of unending scrutiny since the company acquired the assets of CBS and Paramount from the Redstone family last year. Under Bari Weiss, CBS News’ editor in chief, credibility has eroded; ratings have dropped for “CBS Evening News” and “CBS Mornings; several prominent journalists and executives, including Anderson Cooper, Claudia Milne and Scott MacFarlane, have chosen to exit; and the senior staff of “60 Minutes” has been gutted, even though the show posted a 9% increase in ratings in the most recent TV season and the show’s new executive producer has called for an increase in the content the program creates. There has been significant speculation that Weiss will be handed similar oversight of operations at CNN.
At CNN, signs of similar unease about Weiss’s prospective leadership have already started to sprout. Last week, Paula Reid, a well-regarded CNN legal-affairs correspondent, told executives she would not renew her deal for another term at the news outlet, according to two people familiar with the matter, citing the chaos and uncertainty likely to envelope CNN after the Paramount deal is closed. Reid is expected to move to MS NOW, which, under its top executive, Rebecca Kutler, has put a new emphasis on enterprise reporting, particularly in Washington, D.C.
A merged Paramount-Warner Bros. would still get its lion’s share of revenue from cable, so CNN’s financial health would continue to matter. The network serves as a linchpin in Warner’s negotiations with distributors ranging from Charter to Roku, according to two people familiar with aspects of the network’s operations. Other cable networks may be seen as disposable in an era when more consumers choose streaming over linear TV, these people argue, but not CNN, particularly when it provides in-the-moment coverage of critical national and world events. Weiss does not have any experience managing such a property, and has not gained any while working in her current role.
“CNN is a very complex asset. It is global, multiplatform. There are cameras in every country. It has a huge army of talent,” says one of these people. “It’s a totally different beast than broadcast, and you could well kill the golden goose” if it’s mismanaged. “If you chip away at your core audience through machinations, you could really hurt the business.”
Indeed, CNN staffers have seen this plot play out before — and in the recent past. When Warner came under the direction of CEO David Zaslav, he mandated that CNN scale back the crusading, Trump-as-a-foil stand the network took under Zucker. He installed Chris Licht, a wunderkind producer who had helped launch “Morning Joe” on MSNBC; injected new momentum into CBS News’ morning program, a perennial third-place horse in broadcast TV’s a.m. wars; and helped Stephen Colbert find new direction in late night.
At the time, there was some thought that CNN could win over some of the Fox News audience by veering away from the anti-Trump attitudes. The network moved popular host Don Lemon off of his late primetime show. CNN in 2023 televised a raucous town hall with Trump moderated by correspondent Kaitlan Collins that quickly went off the rails, as the guest insulted Collins and pro-Trump audience members hooted on screen. During Licht’s time, ratings fell, and current staffers are quick to note that the network has yet to gain back a substantial portion of them.
Weiss may have some wiggle room, according to a second person familiar with CNN’s business. The cash flow from distribution is regular and constant, unlike advertising, which can fluctuate, this person says. And because approximately three-quarters of revenue comes from distribution contracts that are negotiated once every few years, a few changes to CNN programs might not stir immediate outrage or bring severe consequences, at least from partners. If Weiss only makes a few programming changes, rather than a wholesale overhaul of the CNN lineup, audiences and business partners might not react strongly.
Under CNN’s current chief, Mark Thompson, the network has done just that. One of CNN’s most popular programs is “NewsNight,” a rowdy roundtable hour during which moderator Abby Phillip steers what is often a loud conversation among various partisans. Thompson has also put a spotlight on Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator who often serves as a strong foil to liberal sentiment.
Paramount has expressed interest in pairing Weiss with an executive to help manage the business aspects of its news operations. But people familiar with these talks say those who have taken part in them have been told that they would be subordinate to Weiss, a condition at which most have balked. Could Thompson could be one of them? His current title at CNN is CEO and editor in chief — an arrangement he also enjoyed when he led the BBC in the U.K.
Thompson is “a man of conviction,” says the CNN staffer, and journalists at the company have put more faith in him as he has slowly articulated a bigger push into digital and streaming media and gotten Warner Bros. Discovery to invest in the endeavor. Teaming with Weiss, however, would likely to require him to cede duties he has already won.
Without a boost from new digital revenue, CNN’s business will likely decline, according to projections from Kagan, a market-research unit of S&P Global Intelligence. CNN’s cash flow is seen falling to $735.3 million in 2027, according to Kagan, down nearly 10% from $815.9 million in 2025. A projected spike in 2026 is due to midterm election coverage, which typically draws broader audiences. Advertising is projected to fall about 6.6% to $457.6 million in 2027, according to Kagan, compared with $489.8 million in 2025. Cash from distribution, however, is expected to keep rising.
The scrutiny on Weiss’s management will only intensify should she move to CNN, says one of the people familiar with its operations. “I think her problem isn’t going to be the business,” says one of the people familiar with CNN operations. “People you actually want are not going to make a leap of faith to join when it’s too noisy, it’s too messy.”
In the event CNN undergoes a radical shift, perhaps the network’s spirit can live somewhere else.
MS NOW’s Kutler was a longtime CNN editorial executive who thrived during the Zucker era, was put in charge of programming for CNN+, a streaming venue that was canceled before it really had a chance to find its footing, and who had a hand in the success of anchors and contributors including Abby Phillip and Van Jones. In her early tenue at MS NOW, the network has enlisted top journalists like Carol Leonnig, an investigative reporter known for her tenure at the Washington Post.
Some executives at Versant Media, MS NOW’s parent, would not disagree if you suggested that the network has sanded off some of its harder-left edge in favor of a more center-left disposition. They might note MS NOW keeps landing newsmakers of interest to its audience at moments when they are at the center of a breaking cycle. They might nod to year-over-year ratings increases at the network in June. And they would highlight an interview Senate Majority Leader John Thune did early-morning anchor Ali Vitali in October of last year, just before the network changed its name from MSNBC.
If Paramount-Warner Bros. decides to overhaul CNN, at least one rival still sees value — and profit — in the old formula.
